Boo!

I wanted to combine the slower paced instrumental ambient stuff I've been doing with metal. That, and continue to experiment. I'm pretty happy with the dynamics of this track. The vocals were super last minute, as I was waiting for my wife to go down to the park with our dog before I got to doing the death metal vocals (Born to scream, forced to wait for alone time).

I wrote a lot of these lyrics in the movie theater watching Iron Lung, lol. Not because it was boring or anything, quite the opposite actually. The movie was super atmospheric and reminded me a lot of Event Horizon's cosmic horror mixed with the oppressive atmosphere of Alien. Highly recommend. The lyrics aren't about the movie though and are actually a personal reflection.

This weekend was super awesome. I got to see my all-time favorite band, Kayo Dot, here in Tucson. I think the last time they performed here was back around 2008 or something crazy far back. The show was stellar and massively fucking inspiring. I brought as many friends as I could to experience it with me and we had a great time. I go to speak with Toby Driver at length for a while after the show too, and then my friends and I went out to a late night dinner to get some grub. I feel like I'm on cloud nine, I just had such a memorable time and it made me happy. I need to get together with my friends more often and get things going with getting a band together so I can start performing this music.

› Lyrics‹ Lyrics

Fall!

And in the stillness we wait for the cosmos to swallow us whole

And then

silence

Retreating deep into that quiet dark

Those deafening thoughts fade and become dull

A blue phosphene orb drifts in on wisps of ether

Like a sprightly candle flame freed from the prison of its wick

Tempting focus, feigning disinterest 

A glimpse of that inner light takes the shape of a rose

The semblance of self sought for so long

The uncaged heart meeting the soul

Please, don’t forget this

The illusion fades and all becomes clear

Never to be alone

Peace in sleep, immersed in void

No draught of Lethe to drown what’s found within

› Additional fun fact‹ Additional fun fact

Oh, it almost slipped my mind, but this song is actually a really old tune I wrote! Something that was never fully realized, so I guess I wanted to get a decent demo of it done, especially because the song itself was written around the time I was first getting into kayo dot. Here's a video of me playing it back in 2010.

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During the first four weekly beats I did a lot of idea generation/discovery first and then arranged/trimmed/elaborated as needed, all on the M8. This week I wanted to try the same thing but on piano, my native instrument. I recently invested in a microphone setup for my piano and am fairly new to the world of recording acoustic piano. Last night I sat down and improved around 16 minutes of music, and then today I chopped it up, merged bits I like, and stretched some parts to create smoother transitions.

Some of the chopping and joining still sounds evident to me, but some of it I've already forgotten happened. I'd love to learn some techniques around extending a sustained chord longer than recorded. I ended copy/pasting the sustain, added a crossfade and lowering the gain on subsequent sections. It was more noticeable in some areas than others.

Because I've been playing and improving on piano for so long, I don't really know how I feel about the final product. This is unlike my earlier WB submissions, where the instrument (the M8) and the style/genre are new to me and I have strong immediate opinions about what I like/dislike.

All in all a fun experiment, and a good excuse to learn the tools, cheers!

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Arnljot's Short but Efficient Holiday is a piece of instrumental music that brings to life Arnljot's short but efficient holiday. Before the creation of this tune, Arnljot's short but efficient holiday never happened, nor did Arnljot exist.

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Collab with my partner sadinfamysings

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A busy week, finished another track in a separate music production forum (Dwelling of Duels).

Didn't give this one the time it really needed so it's an early draft that relies very heavily on its source inspiration which is from the main theme for an old GBA/Wii game called Dialhex or Rotohex. Kind of a Tetris-y sort of puzzle game with a very cool chill ambient soundtrack that plays and evolves over 15 minutes or so. Wish I could have done this one justice, but I'll return to the idea at some point.

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I like fun music, I swear. But I slipped on the frozen streets of Berlin and fell on my butt real hard and apparently that knocked loose some angst*.

Again, M8 instrumental with vocals produced on top and in the box. Turns out fellow Weeklybeater maksy is my good friend who kept his participation a secret from me until this weekend when I came to visit. So special thanks to him for being my recording engineer on this one, and adding his sweet baritone guitar on the last chorus.

The core bass patch is a simple WAVSYNTH saw wave, gentle POST:W2 distortion, with the BANDSTP filter set to 9F (slight bell) and pushing the RES with an LFO to give that screechy distortion.

*Song origin partly mythologized. I did fall on my butt pretty hard tho

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Someone told me to make electro swing. This was quite the journey, but I think I got it.

It's not a genre we're used to (and considering there's maybe one other electro swing song on this site to my recollection, neither is anyone else). It was tricky getting the right sounds. There's three levels of those, if you want an authentic trumpet sound, you record an actual fucking trumpet; if you want a convincing one, spend roughly the same amount of money for a fancy VST; if you just want to make music, you just go with what you got, lean in on the trash, and hope the vibes carry you. Naturally I'm going for the last option.

Played it side-by-side to some other electro swing, ones that don't sample an entire song from the whenevers, and it seems to fit well enough.

Perhaps next time I can turn it/whatever I learned into chip metal. Ask me if you feel like making some electro swing yourself.

- Valx

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This one was made in 5 minutes. Enjoy!

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Trying to write a song under 2 mins, trying to embrace shorter timelines.

Thank you.

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Produced on Dirtywave M8 and finished in Reaper

Length: 2m00s

BPM: 80

Genre: Dungeonsynth

Samples: All samples were taken from Erang's tomes of free samples

Arturia Tape Mellow-Fi and Valhalla Supermassive reverb were added in Reaper

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What started off as a rainy day ambient mood morphed into something a bit more isolated with the reverb and lo-fi applied.

A late night drive through the pines in the Pacific Northwest; a glimpse of something, a destination unknown

When the rain is coming down and you have the road to yourself, what do you listen to?

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